Jonathan Sohus — also identified in records as John Sohus — was twenty-seven years old, a computer programmer, the son of the woman who was now Gerhartsreiter’s landlady. He and Linda had recently married. Their lives were not glamorous, and they were not wealthy, but they were building something: an ordinary domestic life in a comfortable suburb of Los Angeles.
Gerhartsreiter moved in their orbit. He was a neighbor and a tenant — present at the house, familiar with the family, positioned within a web of personal relationships that gave him knowledge, access, and proximity.
In early 1985, Jonathan and Linda Sohus disappeared. Their landlady — Jonathan’s mother — received a postcard purportedly sent from France, suggesting the couple had gone abroad. The postcard quieted concern, at least temporarily. Questions lingered about why two people had gone to Europe without notice and hadn’t been in touch since, but in the absence of any evidence of foul play, the situation sat unresolved.
Gerhartsreiter — as Christopher Chichester — disappeared at roughly the same time.
—
## The Truck and the Crossed Trail
The investigation that should have happened in 1985 was scattered, incomplete, and ultimately inconclusive at the time. Gerhartsreiter had left California. Linda Sohus’s body has never been found. Jonathan Sohus appeared to be in France.
The next time Gerhartsreiter surfaced in records in connection with this case, he was on the other side of the country.
In late 1988, a man calling himself Christopher Crowe was stopped by police in Greenwich, Connecticut, while attempting to sell a pickup truck. The truck belonged to Jonathan Sohus. He was aware enough of the risk that he left before police could fully interview him.